It seems a lot of people are willing to write off minimal discomfort and approximate that to 0 discomfort, I don't think thats fair at all.
If we are talking in terms of this 'discomfort' lets start out with two sets of K people out of a population of X >>> K people, with each set having the same 'discomfort' applied to them each, set A and set B. One set must bear with the discomfort, which set should we pick?.
Clearly at the start, both are defined to be the same. So we then double the number in set A while halving their discomfort.
One way to define an activity A to be 'half the discomfort' of B is to ask the average person how long will they take activity A for say... $100 and the same for B, if they are willing to take twice as long on A than B, lets call that half. There is no such thing as infinite discomfort because we are dealing with people here, double the number of people you double the discomfort.
Torturing two people for 50 years is twice as bad as torturing one person for fifty years, how do we work that out? well we have some non infinite of discomfort for "torturing for 50 years".
Eventually after many repetitions, we hit on some discomfort which 'suddenly' someone has arbitrary said is ~ 0 discomfort even though it is really some small discomfort. And since 0*K = 0, we can set the number of people in set A to be (X-K) (a bit unfair to have the guys in set B to be in set A too I think, give them a break) yet it will still be better to choose set A over set B. The sum of the discomforts is less in A than B.
Lets say that we are now that the discomfort of A is a speck of dust, and the discomfort of B is 50 years torture. Lets now crank up the discomfort of A, until we hit the precise point that you just about start to care about your discomfort (just before it changes from ~0 to some number). I reckon a stubbed toe would be a good point though I bet even more discomfort would be the true discontinuity point. K is now 1 person, and X is the entire human population of the planet. This is fine because its ~0*6.6 billion = 0, yet you take a stumble after you stub a toe, you lose .1 minutes of your life in a bad way, its not nice, if it was nice then the discomfort would be negative!
But we are all happy right? everyone stubs their toe, and a man (or woman) is saved from 50 years of torture. However, that comes to 1256 years of stubbed toes, that comes to a total of 1256 years of lost living, time spent wincing at your sore toe rather than looking the sky and so on. Is that still acceptable? double the people, 2512 years, still fine? keep on going cause to you (and people in general if your right), the discomfort is ~0.
Keep on doubling that number and watch those wasted pain filled years double and double. If you suddenly say 'ok thats enough, a trillion subbed toes is worse than 50 years torture!' then we simply double the number of people tortured, then half the population stub their toes for one guy, half for the other. Imagine the hundreds of thousands of years humanity has wasted with stubbed toes, and if you dont see that as bad you should wonder if your biased by scope insensitivity.
Followup to: Torture vs. Dust Specks, Zut Allais, Rationality Quotes 4
Suppose that a disease, or a monster, or a war, or something, is killing people. And suppose you only have enough resources to implement one of the following two options:
Most people choose option 1. Which, I think, is foolish; because if you multiply 500 lives by 90% probability, you get an expected value of 450 lives, which exceeds the 400-life value of option 1. (Lives saved don't diminish in marginal utility, so this is an appropriate calculation.)
"What!" you cry, incensed. "How can you gamble with human lives? How can you think about numbers when so much is at stake? What if that 10% probability strikes, and everyone dies? So much for your damned logic! You're following your rationality off a cliff!"
Ah, but here's the interesting thing. If you present the options this way:
Then a majority choose option 2. Even though it's the same gamble. You see, just as a certainty of saving 400 lives seems to feel so much more comfortable than an unsure gain, so too, a certain loss feels worse than an uncertain one.
You can grandstand on the second description too: "How can you condemn 100 people to certain death when there's such a good chance you can save them? We'll all share the risk! Even if it was only a 75% chance of saving everyone, it would still be worth it - so long as there's a chance - everyone makes it, or no one does!"
You know what? This isn't about your feelings. A human life, with all its joys and all its pains, adding up over the course of decades, is worth far more than your brain's feelings of comfort or discomfort with a plan. Does computing the expected utility feel too cold-blooded for your taste? Well, that feeling isn't even a feather in the scales, when a life is at stake. Just shut up and multiply.
Previously on Overcoming Bias, I asked what was the least bad, bad thing that could happen, and suggested that it was getting a dust speck in your eye that irritated you for a fraction of a second, barely long enough to notice, before it got blinked away. And conversely, a very bad thing to happen, if not the worst thing, would be getting tortured for 50 years.
Now, would you rather that a googolplex people got dust specks in their eyes, or that one person was tortured for 50 years? I originally asked this question with a vastly larger number - an incomprehensible mathematical magnitude - but a googolplex works fine for this illustration.
Most people chose the dust specks over the torture. Many were proud of this choice, and indignant that anyone should choose otherwise: "How dare you condone torture!"
This matches research showing that there are "sacred values", like human lives, and "unsacred values", like money. When you try to trade off a sacred value against an unsacred value, subjects express great indignation (sometimes they want to punish the person who made the suggestion).
My favorite anecdote along these lines - though my books are packed at the moment, so no citation for now - comes from a team of researchers who evaluated the effectiveness of a certain project, calculating the cost per life saved, and recommended to the government that the project be implemented because it was cost-effective. The governmental agency rejected the report because, they said, you couldn't put a dollar value on human life. After rejecting the report, the agency decided not to implement the measure.
Trading off a sacred value (like refraining from torture) against an unsacred value (like dust specks) feels really awful. To merely multiply utilities would be too cold-blooded - it would be following rationality off a cliff...
But let me ask you this. Suppose you had to choose between one person being tortured for 50 years, and a googol people being tortured for 49 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. You would choose one person being tortured for 50 years, I do presume; otherwise I give up on you.
And similarly, if you had to choose between a googol people tortured for 49.9999999 years, and a googol-squared people being tortured for 49.9999998 years, you would pick the former.
A googolplex is ten to the googolth power. That's a googol/100 factors of a googol. So we can keep doing this, gradually - very gradually - diminishing the degree of discomfort, and multiplying by a factor of a googol each time, until we choose between a googolplex people getting a dust speck in their eye, and a googolplex/googol people getting two dust specks in their eye.
If you find your preferences are circular here, that makes rather a mockery of moral grandstanding. If you drive from San Jose to San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose, over and over again, you may have fun driving, but you aren't going anywhere. Maybe you think it a great display of virtue to choose for a googolplex people to get dust specks rather than one person being tortured. But if you would also trade a googolplex people getting one dust speck for a googolplex/googol people getting two dust specks et cetera, you sure aren't helping anyone. Circular preferences may work for feeling noble, but not for feeding the hungry or healing the sick.
Altruism isn't the warm fuzzy feeling you get from being altruistic. If you're doing it for the spiritual benefit, that is nothing but selfishness. The primary thing is to help others, whatever the means. So shut up and multiply!
And if it seems to you that there is a fierceness to this maximization, like the bare sword of the law, or the burning of the sun - if it seems to you that at the center of this rationality there is a small cold flame -
Well, the other way might feel better inside you. But it wouldn't work.
And I say also this to you: That if you set aside your regret for all the spiritual satisfaction you could be having - if you wholeheartedly pursue the Way, without thinking that you are being cheated - if you give yourself over to rationality without holding back, you will find that rationality gives to you in return.
But that part only works if you don't go around saying to yourself, "It would feel better inside me if only I could be less rational."
Chimpanzees feel, but they don't multiply. Should you be sad that you have the opportunity to do better? You cannot attain your full potential if you regard your gift as a burden.
Added: If you'd still take the dust specks, see Unknown's comment on the problem with qualitative versus quantitative distinctions.